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Doug Review/Transcript
(Intro) Kyle: 'There's a bomb in the lasagna? '''Doug: '''A bomb in the lasagna?! Great Scott! *dives into the lasagna* In the past decade, ''Doug ''has garnered a reputation for being...more than a tiny bit bland, simple, and cliche. Let me put it this way; the first episode of the show is about the family moving into a new town, which is just about the most cliched thing you can do for a first episode. I...really don't wanna be too harsh on ''Doug ''because, while it is very cliche now, ''Doug ''came out at a time when these ideas were still new and fresh. Slice-of-life cartoons certainly existed before ''Doug, technically speaking they've existed since The Flintstones. But they were generally aimed at an older audience or families as a whole. (Shows clip of the Hanna-Barbera sitcom, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home) '''Irma: ''Kids today like to have their own way and what Daddy doesn't know won't hurt him'' Doug was one of the first aimed at kids. Well I mean one of the first that you could take some degree of serious. (Cut to Little Clowns of Happytown) Awful Bebad: ''I love to gloom whoever's near'' I love to spread bad cheer I love to scowl and sneer It makes me awfully bad Cause I'm awful *laughs* I'm awful Awful Bebad, Geek, and Whiner: ''Awful Bebad!'' Awful Bebad: 'Oh, get down! *evil laugh* It wasn't made just to moralize like ''My Little Pony Tales,'' or ''Looney Tunes Babies ''or something like that. And it was certainly a lot quieter than the other two of the original Nicktoons. Without ''Doug, it's hard seeing Nickelodeon ever adding in shows like Hey Arnold! ''or ''As Told by Ginger. Who knows, without something like Doug, Nick may have never taken the chance on Avatar. That being said, it can be ''exceptionally'' hard to go back to the past in some cases. Because Doug, if it was ever good in its own right has aged very poorly. As I said at the start, I don't wanna be too harsh on this show, because it is relatively harmless, but there is no way around this. ''Doug ''is '''boring. And I think it might have something to do with the passage of time. A lot of the characters in this show would have been seen as "over-the-top" and "wacky." Grandma Opal: 'Rock and roll, Funnie family! Grandma's here! *giggles* Come on out! '''Doug: '''Hang on, Porkchop. Grandma Opal's come to town. Similar to ''The Simpsons back before a lot of the weirdness we experienced throughout the rest of the nineties. Take Skeeter for instance. I mean, his name is "Mosquito." That's almost as stupid a name as Absody. And for what it's worth, Skeeter does act quirky and unusual. You know, for the time. Throughout the nineties alone, we've had characters like Twister from Rocket Power and Phil and Lil from Rugrats. It's hard for anything about this show to look "weird" or "bizarre" after Rocko's Modern Life ''and all the craziness that that show entailed. Judy at one point in time was the craziest big sister in a cartoon. Compare that to where we are today with ''The Loud House. The same problem affects the characters who are more down-to-earth. Doug himself is so down-to-earth, that he pretty much lives in the core. '''Doug: '''Population: twenty thousand...and one. I guess the one is...me! I mean, his personality has no edges. Actually, he doesn't really have much of one at all. I get the idea that they're going for. They wanted to create "the everyman." You know, a sort of blank shell that anyone can really relate to. That may have been why ''Doug ''got so popular in the first place. Because this show was pretty popular at the time, popular enough to get poached by Disney at least. But I watched several episodes and I have a hard time remembering much about Doug himself. I guess you can call him the "quiet kid with a good heart," but you could say the same thing about ''every single'' slice-of-life cartoon protagonist. I don't think that I can say one thing about Doug that I couldn't say about, say, Arnold from Hey Arnold!. Besides the fact that Doug writes a lot in his journal. In this show, Doug is the character with the secret crush, but that's not much of a difference. I don't think you could come across a series starring teenagers in which one of the main subplots isn't about a crush of some kind. It just doesn't happen. I do remember watching this show quite a lot as a kid, but I don't really remember why. And I don't think it's because I'm now out of its target demographic. I think it's just because I've seen so many other shows. And honestly, maybe Doug's demographic might be one of the issues it has. It stars kids in middle school and it's one of the most innocent, conflict-free, down-to-earth Nicktoons of them all. When in reality, middle school is an incredibly turbulent time in anyone's life. Look at all the shenanigans that happened in Ned's Declassified. '''Mr. Sweeney: '''This is ridiculous. You can't make a time machine! There's a ton of craziness that you could do with a middle school setting. ''Doug ''does have imagination sequences that are...interesting, I will give it that. But once again, they're interesting for their time. As an imaginative kid, this might have been one of the things that appealed to me in this show. But once again, time has just not looked kindly on it. You could take any of these imagination sequences and they'd '''pale in comparison to the stuff that Rugrats ''would do later in its life. The conflicts that Doug himself go through are much more apt for say, elementary school. In one episode, all the parents are fighting over which of the kids gets to be pictured for the baseball team. This is not something that happens to middle school kids or later. I'm not asking for Bluffington to like, explode or anything, I just need a reason to be invested in these stories. And it's hard to do it with conflicts that are just so light. It's more or less fluff. ''As Told by Ginger and Hey Arnold! are also shows in the same genre, and they get around this issue in their own way. Hey Arnold! ''is a show that has heavier conflicts. A washed-up singer faking his own death, growing up in an abusive home, parental favoritism, and being an outcast. I could pull up just as many examples from ''As Told by Ginger. Ginger: ''She chose to walk alone, though others wondered why'' Refused to look before her, kept eyes cast upwards towards the sky She didn't have companions, no need for earthly things Only wanted freedom, from what she felt were puppet strings That's not to say that Doug ''never took a chance. There were ''some episodes about heavier subject matter, like bullying, and in one case, anorexia. I mean the problem gets resolved in 22 minutes, but for the time you could only ask for so much when each episode needs to get wrapped up in a tiny little bow. The thing that I liked most about this show is probably its aesthetics. I don't know, I-I just like how it's animated, I like all of the colors, and I like the character designs. The technicolor people give Doug ''its own unique style. The scat singing in the soundtrack is also one of the most memorable things about it. For better or worse. ''(Plays some of the scat singing background music in the first episode) I do think that Doug ''has a tone and style that is rather unique, and it does give you quite a few good feelings in hindsight. And it's clear that a lot of effort went into this show as well. The creator, Jim Jinkins, originally pitched it as a children's book. Most publishers weren't very interested, but Nickelodeon Studios was. And he put a lot of effort into meticulously creating each aspect of the series. A lot of the characters were also apparently based on real people. In the end, I have to say that ''Doug's biggest flaw is that the time it came out in. This is another show like Ren & Stimpy ''that I respect a lot more than I like. But there is a difference between the two shows. When it comes to ''Ren & Stimpy, even to this day, there is no other show like it. The same cannot be said for Doug. And that's kind of why I respect it. I truly believe that we would not have shows like As Told by Ginger ''or ''Hey Arnold! ''or even ''The Loud House without Doug. Doug ''was an important aspect in the development of Nickelodeon. It was the quieter of the three original Nicktoons, with more, let's call them realistic characters. Without ''Doug, Nickelodeon might have gone to its more over-the-top insanity, something that it's often stereotyped as being. When you have a lot of that craziness though, you need something to ground it, and Doug ''was important for its time; being the saner edge of the Nicktoons. And I am definitely glad that it exists at all. Would I recommend watching it today, though? '''Bob White: '''Stupid? You bet it is! No. If for some reason you do have the desire to watch ''Doug, I'd recommend watching'' As Told by Ginger and that problem should clear itself right up. ''(End Credits Theme: "I Need Mo Allowance" from the episode "Doug Meets RoboBone") Category:Nick-o-Rama Category:Transcripts